The Narthex

Things sometimes appear in social media seemingly out of nowhere, though one suspects they surface as “click-bait” created to generate readers’ reactions. That’s what I thought on Sunday when my X.com feed resurfaced a talk by National Public Radio chief executive Katherine Maher (her talk is linked below). The video…

World Vasectomy Day Nov 21-22 is the 12th Annual "World Vasectomy Day," an annual "celebration" during which vans prowl some neighborhoods offering male sterilization. Since 2022 the act has been designated a sign of male "ally-ship" with post-Dobbs women by "taking responsibility" for fertility. Such euphemistic claptrap has become so normalized…

With Lafayette, Jefferson, and Madison in a single carriage, the large entourage -- the Committee of Arrangements, cavalry, and “a numerous body of citizens” -- left Monticello at 10 a.m. on Friday, November 5, 1824, for Charlottesville, about five miles distant. The population of Albemarle County (which did not include…

November is the month dedicated to prayer for the faithful departed. Many Catholics visit cemeteries during November. For that reason I want to share Father Józef Tischner’s reflections on cemeteries, found in the just-released translation of one of his seminal works, The Philosophy of Drama. Tischner is most known as…

Yesterday, November 17, marked an anniversary: 35 years ago the Lord freed the Czech and Slovak peoples from Communist oppression through the Velvet Revolution. Let us not forget that great moment in human freedom in 1989. Five years ago, I walked across Charles Bridge, that famous span in Prague, going…

The principal source for what occurred on Lafayette's November 1824 visit to Jefferson is the November 10 issue of Charlottesville’s Central Gazette, later credited to Charles Downing.[1] While it has not survived, it was reprinted in whole or in part in papers of Richmond, Alexandria, Lynchburg and Fredericksburg. READ FULL BLOG POST

The Bald and the Unbeautiful Head shaving has been among the jejune reactions of some frenzied women to Kamala Harris’s implosion. Social media is full of these virtue signalers demonstrating why haircuts should only be done by trained professionals. I’m surprised Biden’s FDA has not demanded warning disclaimers on these…

Rumor has it that the annual Diocesan Priest Retreat features a lottery. The winner, and only the winner, is allowed to discuss his physical maladies. Such a limitation is not the case for late-septuagenarian bloggers. But I’ll not regale you, gentle reader, with physical maladies. Instead, I beg your indulgence…

November 11 is Veterans Day, the day we honor the sacrifices -- including their lives -- that men and women of our armed forces have made for their country. Veterans Day emerged as the day we honor soldiers because it was originally Armistice Day; on the eleventh day of the…

I now turn to Lafayette’s extended stay with Thomas Jefferson at his home in Monticello. In November 1824, Lafayette spent ten full days with Jefferson and visiting the University of Virginia and Charlottesville (where yours truly now lives), and four days with James and Dolley Madison in their home at…

Social media is beset by hysterical women and soy boys having collective hissy-fits and meltdowns that their country has “betrayed” them by electing Donald Trump. A certain Schadenfreude has led to re-postings of breakdowns, and to normal people asking whether they're real. Alas, they are real. They're real and they…

Ten states recently voted on abortion referenda: Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Maryland, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New York, and South Dakota. Six referenda legalizing abortion-on-demand passed; three failed (Florida, Nebraska, South Dakota). One (Nevada) passed but cannot go into effect unless passed in a second referendum. How shall we see the…

Anthony Esolen has penned a great essay about pride, especially in connection with the just-concluded Synod on Synodality. He rightly notes (at The Catholic Thing, linked below) that it is pride to believe that modernity has “discovered” a “new way of being Church” and that all we need to do…

A young Frenchman, Julien Icher, founder of the Lafayette Trail, has been working with the American Friends of Lafayette to erect historical markers at each of Lafayette’s stops.[1] Also during this bicentennial, there will be a number of reenactments. For example, one woman planned reenactments of his visit…

As November begins, light or its lack becomes something of a focus. The American poet William Cullen Bryant described the end of October, leading into November, as when “suns grow meek, and the meek suns grow brief.” In England, bonfires traditionally illumined the hills on these days as the harvest…